General Dahlia Chat 2023

blown_dry · 2023-02-04T23:41:17+00:00

Continuing from https://cubits.org/Dahlias/thread/view/91587/?offset=560#end_of_thread

Teddahlia

The Portland Dahlia Society has become an extremely large and active club. I joined in about 1990 and they had about 50 members(just a guess) and during most of the 1990s there were less than 100 members. It went up to about 130 during the 2020s and about 3 years ago has been on a growth spurt. The club sold tubers on line a few years ago and gave a discount to members. Lots of people not living in the Portland area joined to get the discounts. I believe it was announced at our meeting that we had over 400 members now. Part of this is possible due to the Zoom broadcast of the meetings. Another benefit is the Dahlia Talk Zoom meetings once per month and people love to yak about dahlias and it includes absolute beginners that can ask those basic questions that turn out to be excellent questions for the older people to answer. There have been about 40 people in the Dahlia Talk meetings. You can participate without anybody seeing or hearing you if you want and I go incognito while I am slamming down junk food. Our live meeting Tuesday had well 50 -70 attendees and it was one of the sales meetings with lots of $5.00 tubers, silent auction tubers(they usually go for less than $10.00) and live auction of tubers and pot tubers that garnered higher prices. A presentation on our favorite bad disease, Leafy Gall , was done by Linda Taylor who had lots of power point pages on the screen and got her information from our Oregon State University. It is the disease that keeps on giving and the best cure is to never allow it into your garden.

Honnat

AndreaB Plastic wrap is the only method that works for me. It’s terribly time consuming, both wrapping AND unwrapping. I find the tighter they’re wrapped, the better.

Same. Us upper midwestern folks deal with air that is dryer than any PNW resident could imagine. I have tried vermiculite as well and it failed badly. Shirveled up corpses of tubers. I would try again if I could get them in a space with high humidity. It would be FAR less time consuming. I loose only a few to rot every year, but loose far more to having them dry out. I wrap 5 at a time rolling them up with plastic separating. After the 5th I wrap around the whole thing 3 more times. I always find that the tuber that is on the outside of the pack (last wrapped) is the most prone to some wrinkles even with this approach. This year, I wrapped and placed them in large trays that stack. THen I covered the stacks of trays with plastic with enough space for a bucket of water in the middle of my stacks of trays. That added just a bit of extra humidity. Success! Those stored much better than the few that I had wrapped only.

AndreaB

Honnat That’s interesting! If I lose one to rot, it’s almost always the first one rolled.
I’d be too nervous to have standing water around all of my wrapped tubers. Be careful!

SteveM

My father ran a humidifier in his "Montana dry air" storage room. Like you, shriveling was a much worse problem than when tubers were stored too moist and rotted. Different climates require different storage methods and there is more than "one correct" method for storing tubers.

Krista

I missed PDS club meeting on Tuesday as well. I saw that there was going to be a tuber sale and assumed it would be in-person only. I haven’t had experiences with gall in my garden either, and admittedly feel a bit inundated with reported info about it via FB groups. If I were going to erroneously miss a club meeting, this may have been the right one for me. I’m planning on attending Dahlia Talk though, as (what’s beginning to be) usual!

calico20hill

I know that in Maine low humidity over winter is the hardest to deal with. I think my daugher found the fruit celler (a few steps down from the house and dug into the ground) was the best location at her place. Now she shares storage area with another grower who has been successful with winter storage...It may be a purpose built room...

JessieC

calico20hill Last year, I used a spot similar to a fruit or root cellar—the stone bulkhead that leads into the basement. It’s partially underground, and now separated from the (heated) basement by an insulated door. When we had severe cold last winter, I’d open the door just a crack to let some of the heat in. As for humidity, I kept the tubers in Igloo coolers with a damp rag or sponge that I refreshed every so often. One cooler had boxes with vermiculite, and the other had plastic wrapped bundles. I lost very few to rot or dessication. Per my Bluetooth monitors, the temps stayed between 38-50F with high high humidity (85-95%) inside those coolers. In Virginia, the winter air is very dry—maybe 25-35% rh. @Honnat I had the same setup in my unheated garage, with a large bucket of water both for humidity and as a thermal mass. It probably would have been fine, except for the extreme cold spell we had late in December.
It was a fair amount of work. The pot tuber idea is very appealing to me.

AndreaB

Bessie I do the same, Bessie. Once split, they spend a night or two inside the house before wrapping begins. For each batch, I use several storage tub lids (used as trays) and lay the tubers in a single layer. I trim at least 75% of the ends (to keep the tuber size more manageable) and just let them callous over (without any cinnamon), although I do love the scent ☺️

MissyWeitzel

My body feels 800 years older than last year and yesterday was only day 1 of planting. No real complaints though, as I'd rather do this than most anything.
My husband's grandmother's old hoe was getting dusty in the corner of the garage. Yesterday as I was preparing to plant tubers, it occurred to me to try using it. If I hold it on the side and drag it down my beds, it works just like a trenching hoe!
The worst thing about my planting plan this season is having a combination of tubers and cuttings that aren't ready to plant out that need to go together to make my plan cohesive. Next year if my cuttings aren't all ready when I am, they're getting planted on their own. It's taking me longer to count/mark spots for them to come back to later as I plant tubers only right now. But again, no real complaints because I could be sitting in a cubicle listening to my coworker chew gum loudly. 😅

Bessie

MissyWeitzel I love your photo. I had a similar dilemma of tubers not waking up, cuttings a bit immature, and planting everything in some type of plastic container to protect from gophers. Most of the dahlias went into "1 gallon" nursery containers. I tried to organize the chaos by 1) deciding that similar flower forms get planted together, with a few exceptions, and 2) making name labels before I started planting, for every hole/plant I wanted. I could dig a hole, place a label there, and come back later, if needed, to do the planting. Some of my planting areas are about 60' uphill. I just kept thinking what good exercise I was getting.
My husband helped me by drilling holes using a 4" auger(years old for bulb planting). The starter holes made digging the larger holes easier, but each hole still took a lot of time and energy.
I had to leave for vacation last Tuesday, so there's still about 15 plants needed to be planted when I return. Everything got planted 12" apart(using drip line (12" drip spacing)). I sure hope I'm not planting too close together.

SteveM

Bessie Everything got planted 12" apart(using drip line (12" drip spacing)). I sure hope I'm not planting too close together.

I plant 8" apart and use a 12" spaced drip tape on both sides of the row. I prefer to use drip tape with 6-8" spacing but that spacing wasn't available in the "pressure compensating" drip tape I need to use with my uneven, sloping rows. The only problem with using one row of drip tape with 12" spacing is, when the gophers chew a hole in the tape and you have to repair it, the drip holes are no longer lined up with the plants.

SteveM

Bessie and planting everything in some type of plastic container to protect from gophers

How is this working? I have to do something different than what I am doing now. I am thinking of planting my most valuable varieties in buried plastic bulb crates but don't know how readily gophers will chew through them. Either the gophers are getting very smart or I am getting dumber.

MissyWeitzel

Bessie last season I did 12" triangular spacing and corralled my beds. It worked well for the most part, however my pompons should have been closer together. At 12" they didn't hold each other up well. This year I'm doing 8" for poms, 9" for most others, and 12" for my A and AAs. I have 4' wide beds which are not optimal. Reaching the center is a PITA. I knew it would be, but wanted more dahlias rather than larger walkways. Next year I may expand again and if I do, I'll switch to 3' wide beds, at least 1' wider walkways, but continue to space tightly.
I find it's really important to start stripping bottom leaves once plants are 18-24" high when spacing closely because there is a short window of time where the plants are big enough and it's manageable to where the plants are too big and it becomes a crazy jungle. For me, in Michigan, that's in early to Mid July. Late July and early August is when powdery mildew and spider mites can start becoming an issue for me. If I make grooming the bottom of my plants a priority before then, it saves a lot of headache later!

Bessie

SteveM good to know. I'll have to start thinking of what my strategy will be when the gophers start causing trouble, which is just a matter of time.

Bessie

SteveM it's too early to tell if planting in sunken 1 gallon pots will work. I know I won't get nicely formed tuber clumps, but at least I should have some genetic material to make cuttings with next spring. Gophers destroyed several tuber clumps last fall, and with what tubers that were left, those tubers didn't sprout or decayed over the winter. The exception was a badly eaten out huge Bristol Karma mother tuber. It over wintered wrapped in saran, sprouted very vigorously, and defied any rot. I am very impressed with those tuber genetics.
Bristol Karma

Teddahlia

Spacing on the drip tape is interesting . Many people in our club want 4 inch spacing that dumps water at a high rate. I believe mine is 8 inches and it takes twice as long to water. I want it to take longer as I do worry much about over watering and running up my water bill.

SteveM

Bessie it's too early to tell if planting in sunken 1 gallon pots will work.

For some reason I thought you planted your seedlings in plastic crates. I am wondering how discouraged gophers will be with my bulb crates, I guess I will just have to try a few.

Bessie

SteveM yes, seedlings are in plastic "crates", aka deep woven plastic baskets from the dollar store. No casualties at this point. The dahlias are growing fine. I think the first bloom of the season will be open when I get home from vacation.

Bessie

MissyWeitzel the stripping the bottom leaves is not something I would have thought of doing. I'll plan to do that with my seedlings that are planted in the ground.

Krista

I built another raised bed for dahlias yesterday! I want one to run along the sidewalk in front of our house, on the left side of our walkway. I measured and cut last fall, and designed it to match the 15’ bed that runs the length of the sidewalk on the right side of the front walk.

This one ended up being 51/2” too long - not sure how our property shrunk over the winter, but it definitely did! I wish I’d taken a photo of it when I got it into position, hanging into the walkway, it was hilarious. And not. I’m going to keep this as a third bed, I do need the added bed space. It’ll help to reduce the number of grow bags, and help the front look a little neater. And it’s back to the drawing board to measure and cut another bed. Correctly this time! 😆

SteveM

Krista Nice work! (Remember the old carpenter's adage "Measure twice, cut once") 🙂

« Previous Page Next Page »